Comments on: How To Dictate Writing On Your Mac: Apple’s Dictation vs DragonDictate

By: Bakari Chavanu

Bakari Chavanu — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 07:15:51 +0000

There’s no time limit on DD. When you pause during dictation, it will immediately type what you say.

By: Tom Buckman

Tom Buckman — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:58:01 +0000

What is time limit for DD? Only 30 sec for Mountain Lion…

By: Bakari Chavanu

Bakari Chavanu — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 04:21:53 +0000

Okay. lol

By: Bakari Chavanu

Bakari Chavanu — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 04:21:34 +0000

Seth, Dragon for the Mac has gotten much better with each update. It’s not perfect, but if you want to rest your fingers from typing, it’s worth using. It works fine on my MacBook Air using the built-in mic or the mic on a pair of iPhone earbuds.

By: Seth

Seth — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:27:15 +0000

Question: should I also purchase Dragon?

I have been using Dragon for many years… And they finally nailed in version 11.5. I use Dragon for responding to emails to employees — but not to clients, since Dragon is still prone to errors that could confuse the reader, but which I may not notice before I hit send.

Dragon is also great for dumping hand written notes into the Word to be sorted out later.

I turn off the Command feature to improve accuracy.

So… I’m just now (Nov 2012) buying a new Mac Air – moving from a ThinkPad PC. Should I install Dragon on the Air?

By: Rob Stark, King of the North

Rob Stark, King of the North — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 17:33:02 +0000

I really like your mustache.

By: Rob Stark, King of the North

Rob Stark, King of the North — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 17:32:29 +0000

I like your mustache.

By: Bakari Chavanu

Bakari Chavanu — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 22:44:52 +0000

Hmmm, Kofi, it sounds like the app is not universal as it should be. I would try to write Apple and request your language be added.

By: Kofi Agyeman

Kofi Agyeman — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 07:01:09 +0000

i can’t use dictatiOn.it says it’s nOt available in sOuth africa and tO chOOse anOther language, but even when i chOOse US english, it still dOesn’t wOrk…

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 20:07:13 +0000

In the sense that it allows (a) further corpus training material (and even more if they get corrections back) and (b) they have a lot more computing horsepower than your laptop does, yes. Its general (i.e., non-user-specific training) accuracy would tend to improve over time.

Whether or not it would end up being better (e.g., faster, more accurate, etc.) than a local, dedicated package, I don’t know. There are always privacy concerns, but that’s ultimately a non-technical issue.

By: Bakari Chavanu

Bakari Chavanu — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 20:36:11 +0000

Hmmm, Arie, with the built-in Dictation feature, you shouldn’t have to do any voice training. I use Dictation feature on my MBA as well, and I find I slightly better results when I’m using the mic on my iPhone earphones, which puts the mic closer to my mouth. But it also works with the built-in mic of the MBA. You do have to enunciate your words clearly, but there typically be errors in how it records what you say. And you right, some microphones might not work as well with the Dictation feature.

By: Bakari Chavanu

Bakari Chavanu — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:42:57 +0000

Okay, gotcha. So what do you think about this business of Apple requiring that dictated text be sent their server and back to your computer? Do you really think that helps with accuracy as well?

By: Bakari Chavanu

Bakari Chavanu — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:40:58 +0000

Onekerato, thanks for your feedback. I use BetterTouchTool in almost everything I do on my Mac.

By: Bakari Chavanu

Bakari Chavanu — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:39:55 +0000

Good point, I will give it a try. That sounds similar to using the dictation feature on the iPhone.

By: Arie

Arie — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:18:49 +0000

Thank you for this information, I am using mountain lion
dictate my text here. I am not much of a touch typist, so it is a pretty good new feature from me. Although I have found that with my MacBook air is the microphone on the chassis does not seem to be very accurate. So I’m using an external microphone. But it seems now my voice data needs to be retrained in order to get accuracy again. So do voice database seems to become somewhat garbled by using different microphones.
A great new feature but it certainly takes some patience.